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Journal of Art Historiography Number 17 December 2017
The features of Saint Louis*
P.-Y. Le Pogam1
The recent ninth centenary of the birth of Saint Louis, in 2014, offered the
opportunity for a renewed study of the man and his reign. This would be important
for French history, not merely for celebration or a nationalistic agenda, but in order
to shed new light on a figure who has been studied in depth, but is worthy of new
attention. Extensive study into the figure of Louis IX lends to many-sided, even
contradictory conclusions on his role.2 In the past, one has paid an almost maniacal
attention to the physical appearance of the king, examining some images for a
reflection, or indeed a portrait, of Saint Louis. On the contrary and more recently,
one has denied any validity to this trend of studies. In line with the essay devoted to
this question in the catalogue of the recent exhibition on Saint Louis in Paris,3 we
would like here to go further in the analysis, regarding in particular the meaning of
the details in the dress and bodily features of the saint king.4
A) The delineation of the corpus of images
There are numerous inventories of the representations of Saint Louis made up by
old and more recent studies that are very important and respectable.5 However, we
* Illustrations can be found on a separate pdf here.
1I thank warmly the organizers of the symposium and the participants to the discussion.
Many thanks also to Elisabeth Antoine, François Avril, Samuel Gras, Frederick Hadley,
Marguerite Momesso, Françoise Perrot, and Michel Hérold. 2See Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, ed., Saint Louis [exposition Saint Louis du 8 octobre 2014 au 11
janvier 2015, à la Conciergerie, à Paris], exhib. cat., Paris: Les Éditions du patrimoine, 2014 but
also Jean-François Moufflet, ed., Sous le sceau du roi. Saint Louis, de Poissy à Tunis, 1214-1270,
exhib. cat., Paris: Editions Mare et Martin Arts, 2014, and the symposia held at Poissy and
Amiens, under press. 3Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, ‘De l’image des rois à l’image du roi’, in: Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, ed.,
Saint Louis, exhib. cat., Paris: Les Éditions du patrimoine, 2014, 46-57. 4Given the importance and the celebrity of many of the works of art here mentioned, in
many cases I will quote only the most recent bibliography. 5For instance: Clotilde Feuilloy, Jannie Long, Catherine de Maupéou, ‘Représentations de
Saint Louis sous les traits des rois de France’, Les monuments historiques de la France, 16, 1970,
nr 4, 47-52; Jean Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’, ‘Saint Louis dans l’art
français au début du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le culte et l’iconographie
de saint Louis en Normandie’, Art de Basse-Normandie, 61, 1974, 20-23, 24-28, 29-34, 35-46;
Pierre-Marie Auzas, ‘Essai d’un répertoire iconographique de saint Louis [Répertoire établi
par Feuilloy (Clotilde), Long (Jannie) et Maupéou (Catherine de)]’, Louis Carolus-Barré, ed.,
Septième centenaire de la mort de saint Louis. Actes des colloques de Royaumont et de Paris (21-27
mai 1970), Paris: CNRS, 1976, 3-56.
2
feel compelled to establish our own corpus, firstly because our aim is different, as
the study is more precise than a mere compilation of images and consequently
needs to be restricted in a compact chronological framework (for the geography, we
limit roughly our scope to the limits of medieval France). Secondly, we must take
into account – or rather not take into account – the numerous false identifications
made sometimes by the historiography.
1. Chronological limits
Very few, but important, are the images made in the king’s life (1214-1270). Seals
make up a field often neglected, because it is taken as idealised and repetitive (and
such it is!). Nevertheless, seals build up an image that is seen very often and
everywhere in the kingdom, and even far beyond. The representation of Louis IX
was fixed from the beginning of the reign (1226) and it did not change until 1270,
even when a new seal appeared during the crusade, about 1252.6 Apart from the
seals, there was a handful of representations of Louis IX produced in his lifetime;
but they raise various problems. The last folio of the Moralized Bible of Toledo, kept
in New York (The Pierpont Morgan Library) shows, with a high degree of
probability, the young Louis IX and his mother (fig. 1*).7 Such an image illustrates
the relationship between Blanche of Castilla and her son. The queen is shown on the
right side of the young king, hence in a position of hierarchic superiority, even if
such a choice is balanced by other details (the attributes of power held by Louis IX,
such as his throne, more decorated, and his position, more frontal, etc.). For the
chronological situation, the work can be dated to the 1230s.8 Another precocious
example is the statue kept in Sens and coming from the archiepiscopal palace of the
city, a work that must be linked to the wedding of Louis IX and Marguerite of
Provence (1234) and to the ties between the king and the archbishop, Guillaume
Cornut.9 Perhaps the work came slightly later than this event, but it must
nonetheless be dated early in the reign. Unfortunately, the sculpture has reached us
headless and thus we do not know the appearance that was given to the face of the
king.
* Illustrations can be found on a separate pdf here.
6Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 57-58. 7For quoting a contrary advice (he sees in the queen Marguerite of Provence), see Willibald
Sauerländer, ‘‘Phisionomia est doctrina salutis’. Über Physiognomik und Porträt im
Jahrhundert Ludwigs des Heiligen’, in: Martin Büchsel, Peter Schmidt, eds, Das Porträt vor
der Erfindung des Porträt, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern Verlag, 2003, 116. 8Le Pogam, Saint Louis, 53, 147 et passim. 9Paul Deschamps, ‘La statue de saint Louis à Mainneville (Eure)’, Monuments et mémoires
publiés par l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. Fondation Eugène Piot, 37, 1940, 128,
footnote 2; Paul Deschamps, ‘A propos de la statue de saint Louis à Mainneville (Eure)’,
Bulletin monumental, 127, 1969, nr 1, 39-40; Lydwine Saulnier-Pernuit, ‘Viollet-le-Duc et la
copie’, in: L’image sosie. L’original et son double. Actes du 1er colloque intern. Icône-image
(colloque, Sens, 8-10 juillet 2004), Chevillon: Les Trois P. Obsidiane, 2005, 141-146.
3
In the following years, we find the famous images of Louis IX in his no less
famous creation: the Sainte-Chapelle, namely in the window with the story of the
relics. We will deal with this in length in the following passages, but it should be
noted here that another stained-glass window with the same iconography existed in
Tours cathedral in the same time period, namely around 1245-1248, of which
remains an unrestored panel with the figure of the king (fig. 2).10 In 1260, Louis IX’s
son, Louis of France, died and was inhumated in Royaumont. Around this same
year, Louis IX was represented on the front panel of his son’s tomb-chest, which
shows four figures holding the dead body of the prince. Two figures have been
rightly identified as Louis IX and the king of England, Henry III, who took part in
the funerals, as testified by historical sources. Unfortunately, the tomb was
vandalised and dismantled during the Revolution and the relief, which is now kept
at the Carnavalet Museum, shows only restored heads (fig. 3).11 However, designs
made for Gaignières around 1700 represent the tomb in its original state, where the
two kings seem to be represented as beardless.12
In the same period, and particularly during the first half of the reign, there
were numerous idealised representations of kingship, which probably constituted
an abstract model for Louis IX and, in a back and forth movement, were
transformed by him, an issue which we dealt with recently.13 Many of these works
have, in the past been wrongly considered as images or even portraits of Saint Louis
or of other kings of France. For instance, we should mention the tympanum of the
‘Porte rouge’ in the Parisian cathedral, correctly interpreted by C. Gaposchkin.14
If we move to the images created after the death of the king and before his
canonisation (between 1270 and 1297), we observe that very few representations
have survived for this period. This could be due to technicalities in the preservation
process, but the phenomenon could also correspond with the fact that there was no
real value in creating such an image when the king was dead and before his cult was
officially acknowledged. At the same time, the story of medieval sanctity shows that
creating a representation of the person whose canonisation was wished for played a
significant part in the strategy of his promotion. It is alongside this notion that the
probable existence of a statue (and even probably more than one) in Saint-Denis
should be located. The tomb of the king, and later his shrine, both located near the
main altar, as well as the chapel later dedicated to the new saint in the abbey church,
have been remodelled, renewed or destroyed. Thus many questions remain about
the original appearance and the successive transformation of these different nuclei
10New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, inv. 37.173.3, see Linda Morey
Papanicolaou, ‘Stained Glass from the Cathedral of Tours. The Impact of the Ste.-Chapelle in
the 1240s’, Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal, 15, 1980, 53-64. 11Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 51. 12Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Estampes, Pe 11c, fol. 30-31. 13Le Pogam, ‘De l’image des rois’, 47-49. 14M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, ‘The King of France and the Queen of Heaven. The iconography of
the Porte Rouge of Notre-Dame de Paris’, Gesta, 39, 2000, 58-72.
4
of the cult of Saint Louis at St-Denis.15 I follow here mostly the interpretations of E.
Brown and E. Leistenschneider. Apparently, Saint Louis asked in his last will to be
buried under a main slabstone.16 But his wish was not followed: very rapidly (or
from the start?) his remains were topped with a monumental tombstone, at first
without gisant, but one was created rapidly in metalwork, at least from 1282 and
perhaps as early as 1274. 17 The tombstone was enhanced by a wooden canopy. We
do not know anything about the appearance of the gisant as it was destroyed in the
course of the civil wars at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
There was also a group of full-length statues, most likely produced during
the reign of Philipp III the Bold (1270-1285), namely the royal figures which adorned
the ‘Montjoies Saint-Denis’, a series of monuments that punctuated the itinerary of
the funeral of Louis IX from Paris to St-Denis in 1270.18 These seven monuments
(more probable than nine; this is the only point where I consider Branner’s analysis
more convincing than that of Lombard-Jourdan), each one decorated with three
royal statues, have been totally destroyed and are known only by inaccurate
engravings of modern times. It is not clear whether these statues were meant to
15Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, ‘Le tombeau de saint Louis’, Bulletin monumental, 126, 1968, 7-
36; Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, ‘Le tombeau de saint Louis’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des
antiquaires de France, 1970, 222-228; Georgia Sommers Wright, ‘The Tomb of Saint Louis’,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 34, 1971, 65-82; Elisabeth A. R. Brown, ‘The
chapel of St. Louis at Saint-Denis’, Gesta, 17, 1978, 76; Elisabeth A. R. Brown, ‘The chapels
and cult of Saint Louis at Saint-Denis’, Mediaevalia. A journal of medieval studies (Binghamton),
10, 1984, 279-331; Eva Leistenschneider, Die französische Königsgrablege Saint-Denis. Strategien
monarchischer Repräsentation 1223-1461, Weimar: VDG, 2008, 64-91, the sources are admirably
compiled in Blaise de Montesquiou-Fezensac and Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, eds, Le trésor de
Saint-Denis, Paris: Picard, 1972-1977, 1972-1977, vol. I, nr 186, 204, vol. 2, nr 186, 286-292, vol.
3, 92-93 and pl. 86 (but for some corrections see Brown, ‘The chapels’). 16Following his first hagiographer, Geoffroy of Beaulieu (Leistenschneider, Die französische
Königsgrablege, 69), but one must remember that this idea appears neither in his real will, nor
in its two codicils, see Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nos 38-39. 17The documentation is incomplete, even if there are some written pieces of evidence
(especially in the miracle accounts known thanks to Guillaume of Saint-Pathus, and in the
preserved fragments of the inquiries for the canonisation), and difficult to interpret.
However, one can see, for instance: Louis Carolus-Barré, Le procès de canonisation de Saint
Louis (1272-1297). Essai de reconstitution, Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1995 (Collection de
l’École française de Rome, 195) (in 1271, miracle of Amelot, a poor Normand woman, who
lies on the tomb, which thus cannot have had a gisant at this early date) ; Montesquiou-
Fezensac and Gaborit-Chopin, Le trésor, vol. 2, nr 186, 286 (miracle of Amelot), 289 (miracle
nr 34). 18Robert Branner, ‘The Montjoies of Saint Louis’, in: Douglas Fraser, Howard Hibbard,
Milton J. Lewine, eds, Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower,
London: Phaidon, 1967, vol. 1, 13-16; Anne Lombard-Jourdan, ‘Montjoies et montjoie dans la
plaine Saint-Denis’, Paris et Île-de-France. Mémoires publiés par la Fédération des sociétés
historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, vol. 25, 1974, 141-181; Tanja Praske,
Ludwig IX. der Heilige – eine Zäsur für die monumentale französische Königsdarstellung.
Bildkonzepte der Zeit Philipps IV., Doctoral thesis, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität
Frankfurt am Main, 2006; Leistenschneider, Die französische Königsgrablege, footnote 265.
5
represent only the defunct king (as for the Eleanor Crosses, made for the Saint
Louis’ sister-in-law, a few years later, patently inspired by this prototype), the king
and his ancestors, or a group of ideal kings.
With the canonisation of 1297 everything changed, and we observe a sharp
increase of the representations of the new saint. In St-Denis, on 7 July 1298, the
remains of Louis IX were elevated in a shrine ordered by his grandson, Philip the
Fair. However, we know nothing about its form and iconography, because during
the reign of Charles V it was substituted by another one. In the same period of time
(and from the same goldsmith), the king ordered a reliquary-bust for the head to be
transferred to the Sainte-Chapelle, a work to which we will return below.19 On the
side of the abbey, from the years 1299-1300 to 1303-1304, the abbot Gilles de Pontoise
erected a new chapel consecrated to Saint Louis. Its decoration was naturally
dedicated to the saint king, particularly the glass windows, which will be quoted
below, and also the antependium of the altar, known only via description. On the
altar of the new chapel, there must have stood a statue of Saint Louis, even though,
it has been postulated instead by some authors to be, since the beginning, an
alabaster Virgin and Child.20 This statue of Saint Louis could be the important
metalwork statue, which sources have confirmed was ordered to the goldsmith Jean
of Nanterre in 1298-1299 (interpreted by some as a new gisant on the tombstone,
which does not seem plausible).
The manuscript with the life and miracles of Saint Louis by Guillaume of
Saint-Pathus kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, produced about 1330,
includes numerous illuminations which show the tombstone and mostly (in our
view) the chapel and its statue (fig. 4).21 Similarly, the Hours of Jeanne of Evreux, a
famous manuscript by Jean Pucelle created at the same period, shows what must be
this statue.22 One has disregarded the value of these representations as pieces of
evidence and one must admit that many years had passed between the creation of
the tomb, the chapel and the two manuscripts, which diminishes the value of
testimony of the last ones. Yet, with others, I consider that one can partially trust the
images, as for the sets of images dedicated to the life of the king, as we will see in
following passages. The illuminations of the manuscript by Guillaume of Saint-
Pathus present generally the same image that seems to be the statue of the chapel: a
full-length statue of Saint Louis, put on an altar, dressed for the coronation, holding
19Conversely, the reliquary ordered in the same period by the abbot Gilles de Pontoise for the
inferior part of the head he secured for St-Denis will not be discussed here, because it didn’t
contain a representation of Saint Louis. 20This one is attested since 1505, but can have been installed only in a second stage and not in
the original state (see Brown, ‘The chapels’, 292; Leistenschneider, Die französische
Königsgrablege, 85). 21Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms fr. 5716. 22New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, n° inv. 54.1.2, fol. 102 v°. One could
probably add a fresco at Saulcet, in Auvergne, see Max Polonowski, ‘Saulcet’, in: Congrès
archéologique de France (146e session, Bourbonnais, 1988), Paris: Société française d'archéologie,
1991, 393; Marie-Pasquine Subes-Picot, ‘Peintures murales de Saulcet et de Langlard’, Bulletin
monumental, 159, 2001, nr 3, 262.
6
the instruments of the royal power, bearded and hoary. Indeed, there are some
variations, but they are few and on the whole, do not remove its prototype
character. However, it does not mean that all these features were present in the
statue of Saint-Denis. For instance, it is possible that the painter combined the
record of the real statue and his own mental image of Saint Louis. In the Hours of
Jeanne of Evreux, the statue of the king seems to be very close to this model, but,
while the image is minute in scale and this detail is rather indistinct, Saint Louis
seems to be beardless. Additionally, the manuscript of Guillaume of Saint-Pathus
also gives a representation which pertains probably to the tombstone, because we
see not only the tomb itself but also the wood canopy mentioned above.
In the frescoes of the convent of Lourcine, made for this royal convent of
Clarisses probably at the very beginning of the fourteenth century (fig. 5),23 some
researchers had seen the first impetus of the dissemination of the images and cycles
of Saint Louis, but this idea has been rightly rejected by later studies. Despite the
difficulties presented by the documentary evidence, it is clear that Saint-Denis
formed, just after 1297, the major centre for the scattering of images that contributed
to the cult of the new saint. With the transfer of a great part of the head to the
Sainte-Chapelle on 17 May 1306, the Sainte-Chapelle thus became a nucleus of the
spreading of the cult, as underlined by the bulls of indulgence granted in advance
prevision of the transfer by the popes Boniface VIII in 1300 and later by Clement V
in 1305.24 The ‘public’ character of Saint-Denis and the Sainte-Chapelle, or at least of
some parts of the two buildings, made obvious the use of their decoration as models
for other cycles (much more than the closed convent of Clarisses of Lourcine). It just
happens that in St-Denis, for instance, during the solemn festivities of the elevation
of the body of Saint Louis in 1298, ‘libelli’ were produced with stories of the life of
the king,25 and one could presume that these documents or others of the same type
should have been afterwards at the disposal of artists, just as the statue of the king
in the chapel must have been an important prototype for later images.26 Moreover,
one must remember not only that the chapel of Saint Louis in the sanctuary was
easily accessed by anyone, because it was part of the route of the pilgrims, but
another chapel was erected in Saint-Denis, this time in the nave, before the end of
the abbacy of Gilles of Pontoise (+ 1324) and was also dedicated to the saint king.
Similarly, the lower chapel of the Sainte-Chapelle, where an altarpiece was present
with scenes of the life of Saint Louis (which we will quote further), was easily
accessible.
Our study will stop with the instances of the years 1340-1350 for two reasons.
Firstly, it seems that it is after this date that Louis IX is invariably represented with
23Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 30. 24This second bull has been strangely interpreted by some authors as an authorization for the
cult of Saint Louis, which was perfectly established with the bull of canonization of 1297. 25Montesquiou-Fezensac and Gaborit-Chopin, Le trésor, vol. 2, 289-290. 26For instance, there are ‘IIII. quayers de saint Louys’ (i.e. four ‘libelli’ or liturgical leaflets)
quoted in the after death inventory of the king Louis X, in 1316, see François Avril, Un
bréviaire royal du XIVe siècle = Art de l’enluminure, n° 60, mars-mai 2017, p. 8 footnote 16 and p.
17.
7
the instruments of the Passion of Christ, especially the Crown of Thorns. Thus, what
we consider nowadays as the main symbol of Saint Louis makes a late arrival in the
manifestation of his representation. From the middle of the fourteenth century on,
we are dealing with a ‘commonplace’ image of a saint, with his typical attributes.
Secondly, we can observe from this period onwards, around the middle of the
fourteenth century, a slowdown of the number of images, especially if we do not
take into account the most trite cult images.27 This decline of the dissemination of
the image of Saint Louis appears linked to a weakened interest of the royal family
for legitimation, from the moment when the political crisis of the beginning of the
fourteenth century had been overcome, namely the thorny succession on the royal
throne and the replacement of the Capetian dynasty by the collateral branch of the
Capetian-Valois.28
2. Wrong identifications of works and overinterpretation of texts
As it has been hinted at above, we must be cautious with the chronological brackets
of our corpus, and also with many old identifications of images of Saint Louis,
which must be dismissed from the body of examples. A lot of authors considered
ideal images of monarchy, crypto-portraits, and even works without any link to the
king, as real representations of Saint Louis. Without aiming to be exhaustive, itt is
worth mentioning here some instances of these wrong identifications, because many
left their mark on the historiography, even when they are not quoted or even used in
the current studies. Many examples are linked to the window of the story of the
relics of Passion in the Sainte-Chapelle. The first instance consists of two panels that
were in this window before the great restoration of the middle of the nineteenth
century. These two panels, similar in representation, show a bearded king in a bed.29
27For an instance I choose a statue at Lingreville, see Praske, Ludwig IX. der Heilige, 64, 112
and passim; Elisabeth Marie, ed., Du ciseau du sculpteur au sourire des saints: sculpture gothique
de la Manche (XIIIe - XIVe siècles) [catalogue de l'exposition, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Lô, du
19 novembre 2005 au 29 janvier 2006], exhib. cat., Saint Andre de Bohon: Conseil général de la
Manche, Conservation des antiquités et objets d'art de la Manche, 2005, nr 17. 28On the same trend : Anja Rathmann-Lutz, ‘Images’ Ludwigs des Heiligen im Kontext
dynasticher Konflikte des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010 (Orbis
mediaevalis, 12). A beautiful exception is the manuscript of the life of Saint Louis by
Guillaume de Nangis written and painted for the dauphin Louis de Guyenne at the
beginning of the XVth century (see Paris 1400, exhib. cat., Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2004, n°
68). 29One panel was kept since the 19th century restoration in the sacristy of the upper chapel, it
has been recently lent to the Cluny Museum (Cl. 23895) ; the other has been rediscovered
and restored on the occasion of the recent exhibition at the Conciergerie. About the two
panels, Louis Grodecki, ‘La Sainte-Chapelle’, in : Louis Grodecki, Marcel Aubert, eds, Les
vitraux de Notre-Dame et de la Sainte-Chapelle de Paris, Paris : CNMH-CNRS, 1959 (Corpus
Vitrearum Maedii Aevii, France, 1), 88, 303, 332; Louis Grodecki, ‘Vitraux de la Sainte-
Chapelle récemment découverts’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 1973,
112-114; Louis Grodecki and Catherine Brisac, Le Vitrail gothique. Fribourg: Office du Livre,
1984, 233, footnote 12. On the first one only, Sophie Lagabrielle (Sophie), ‘L’énigmatique baie
8
Given their localisation and the beard of the king, Ferdinand de Lasteyrie argued
them to be a representation of Saint Louis on his deathbed (he did not explain the
redundancy of the panels) and he concluded that the glass windows of the Sainte-
Chapelle were dated later than 1270, an assertion which had been confuted since the
middle of the nineteenth century by other specialists, like the baron of Guilhermy.30
Furthermore, in the same window of the story of the relics, the real Louis IX is
shown many a time in the upper part of the panel (fig. 6). But we must insist on the
fact that many authors and publishers (not to mention movies and web sites) choose
to reproduce panels which have been recreated in the nineteenth century instead of
the few authentic panels of the thirteenth century, in order to illustrate the head of
the king.31
We should mention many other instances of wrong and forced
identifications, such as the cathedral of Chartres;32 the castle of the Louvre;33 the
cathedral of Senlis,34 etc. But, fortunately, all these cases are rarely taken into
account in the bibliography. We will focus more on the chapel of the royal castle of
de la Sainte-Chapelle ou la Baie des Rois très chrétiens’, Revue des musées de France. Revue du
Louvre, 2015, n° 3, 40-56, see 51 and footnote 54; on the second one only, Le Pogam, Saint
Louis, nr 75a and b. 30Ferdinand de Lasteyrie, Histoire de la peinture sur verre d'après ses monuments en France, vol.
1, Paris: Firmin-Didot frères, fils et Cie, 1853, 172. 31Here are the panels of the window where Saint Louis is present (this window having born
heavy restorations, it is difficult to find out the original order of the panels ; hence we follow
here the order of the Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi): A-103, Louis IX puts friars in charge of
recovering the relics (modern); A-97, Louis IX receives the relics at Villeneuve-l’Archevêque
(heavily restored, but the head of the king is authentic); A-98, Louis IX and Robert of Artois
carry the relics (almost completely redone, the head of the king included); A-84, same subject
(authentic, but very faded), A-74, same subject (modern, copy of A-98, and it is the panel
most often used to illustrate the features of the king…); A-71, presentation of the Crown of
thorns to the king and the queen (authentic and well-preserved, but head of the king not
very legible); A-70, letters handed over to the king and the queen (authentic and well-
preserved); A-69, Louis IX orders to buy the relics (modern); A-44, Louis IX carrying the true
Cross (authentic, not much restored, but very faded, the head of the king included) ; A-36,
the king and the queen assist to the construction of the Sainte-Chapelle (modern); A-33,
Louis IX has the Sainte-Chapelle built (modern). See Grodecki, ‘La Sainte-Chapelle’, 1959,
306 and seq. The examination of the glass-windows during the recent restoration has
confirmed the great accurateness of the observations of Grodecki. 32Roger J. Adams, ‘The Column Figures of the Chartres Northern Foreportal and a
Monumental Representation of Saint Louis’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 36, 1973, 153-162. 33Recent communication of C. de Mérindol at the Société nationale des antiquaires de France
(6th February 2013). 34Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’, ‘Saint Louis dans l’art français au début
du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le culte et l’iconographie de saint Louis en
Normandie’; Praske, Ludwig IX. der Heilige, 209 and seq. (one of the few cases where we
disagree with this author); Robert Didier, ‘Standbild des heiligen Ludwig IX. von Frankreich’
in: Guido Siebert, Hartmut Krohm, Holger Kunde, eds, Der Naumburger Meister. Bildhauer
und Architekt im Europa der Kathedralen, exhib. cat., vol. 2, Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag,
2011, 1482-1485.
9
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, because it is at the same time an old theory and one which
is still taken up today.35 Since the end of the nineteenth century, some people insist
on identifying the heads sculpted on the keys of the vaults of the chapel, created
around 1230, as members of Louis IX’s family, including the king himself (fig. 7).
Such an identification raises numerous problems, for example, the localisation of
these heads are situated very high and are nearly invisible from the ground, which
makes it highly improbable that the images were entirely coherent and discernible
for thirteenth-century observers.36 Moreover, until recently, different authors have
claimed to see in the head identified as Louis IX, signs of a pathology, the prominent
muscles of the neck understood as the mark of a spasm of the sternocleidomastoid
muscle, which would be a congenital defect. The same authors claimed that this
disease was quoted in a contemporary document (it should be noted that this
mention would have been totally isolated among all the historical sources about
Saint Louis…), namely an excerpt of the Bonum universale de apibus (l. II, c. LVII, §
63)37. As a matter of fact, we are dealing with the case of a Latin text wrongly
translated and misunderstood.
It must be remembered that this literary work is a collection of ‘exempla’, by
Thomas of Cantimpré, a Dominican preacher, who was native of, and spent the
35Salomon Reinach, ‘Le Musée chrétien dans la chapelle de Saint-Louis au château de Saint-
Germain-en-Laye’, Revue archéologique, 4e sér., vol. 2, 1903, 262-301; Salomon Reinach, ‘Les
portraits de saint Louis et de sa famille’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 45 (3e sér., t. 30), 1903, 1er
septembre, 177-188; Joseph de Terline, ‘La tête de saint Louis à Saint-Germain-en-Laye’,
Monuments et mémoires publiés par l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. Fondation Eugène
Piot, 45, 1951, 123-140, pl. XVI-XIX; Marie-Thérèse Berger, ‘Les têtes sculptées de la Chapelle
Royale’, Antiquités nationales, 29, 1997, 119-123; Alain Villes, ‘Les portraits de Louis IX et de
sa famille aux clefs de voûtes de la chapelle palatine Notre-Dame de Saint-Germain-en-Laye:
perspective nouvelle’, Antiquités nationales, 44, 2013, 177-197; Alain Villes, La Sainte-Chapelle
de Saint-Germain-en-Laye et les portraits de saint Louis et de sa famille, Paris: Éditions du
patrimoine, 2014. 36We cannot develop here the discussion about the problems to which lead the various
proposals of identification of the heads (even the gender of some heads has been
misunderstood…). 37So that the reader may make his own judgement, we give hereafter the full text of the
‘exemplum’, in the edition of 1627 (currently in use): ‘De dira punitione illius qui beato
Ludovico regi Franciae detrahebat et eum contemptus habebat. Hinc nuper ad designandum
meritum devotissimi regis Franciae Ludovici, quiddam accidit, quod subjungo, illis mihi
recitantibus, qui viderunt. Quam gratum autem Deo ipsius regis Franciae exemplum
altissimae humilitatis existat, rex omnium Christus tam evidenti miraculo demonstravit.
Nobilissimus in comitibus Germaniae comes Gelriae Ottho, cursorem cum litteris Parisius
miserat, cursu propero rediturum. Quem redeuntem comes interrogans, quaesivit si regem
Franciae Ludovicum vidisset. At ille, ubi more subsannantis contorsit collum : Vidi, inquit,
illum miserum papellardum regem, caputium habentem capitis super scapulam ex adverso
suspensum. Haec dicens, facies contorsit ex adverso, et sic facies contorta remansit’, Thomas
de Cantimpré, Bonum universale de apibus, 3e ed., Douai, 1627, 588. One will find a good
translation in French in Carolus-Barré, Le procès, 299 and in Thomas de Cantimpré, Les
exemples du « Livre des abeilles ». Une vision médiévale. Présentation, traduction et commentaire
par Henri Platelle, Turnhout: Brepols, 1997.
10
greatest part of his life in the Brabant. But he was a contemporary of Louis IX and
one who was well informed of the facts of the Parisian court. In this ‘exemplum’,
intended to illustrate the virtues of the king (even in his lifetime!), we hear that the
count Othon II of Guelders (1229-1271) sent a messenger to the court of Paris, who
reports upon coming back, that the king of France is unbearably devout. Thomas of
Cantimpré wrote his treatise after the return of Louis IX from his first crusade and
the text fits in well with the very pious atmosphere of the second half of his reign
and with the criticisms, sometimes virulent, it provoked. In order to mock the
attraction of the king towards the mendicant orders, the messenger asserts that
Louis held a hood hanging on his shoulders, like the friars. And in a mockery
gesture, he looks backside onto an invisible hook on his own shoulders. But then
God punishes him and he remains miraculously paralysed. This is the document
some authors have relied upon for pretending that Louis IX was burdened with a
neck disability!
Unfortunately, this text has been applied not only to the keystone of Saint-
Germain-en-Laye, but to various other representations of Saint Louis, especially the
statue of Mainneville, the statuette of the Cluny Museum or the copies of the
destroyed paintings of the Sainte-Chapelle of which we will speak below.38 This is
an example not only of the risk of misunderstanding medieval texts but also the risk
of overinterpreting them, in this case with a medical, anatomical, positivist point of
view that is inessential in the context of the thirteenth century. In this respect, we
must remember the fundamental analysis of W. Sauerländer, who demonstrated
that in the century of Saint Louis, bold physiognomic features (and even more,
pathological features) appeared only in negative or marginal characters.39 Even if
Louis IX were afflicted by such a neck disease, the king would never have been
portrayed as suffering such a sickness!
There are only a handful of texts that really evoke the physical features of
Saint Louis. Thus, in his famous biography, Joinville never describes the physical
appearance of the king, yet the document is swarming with accurate material
observations, especially for colours and garments.40 Paradoxically, clerical authors
gave slightly more information. In his chronicle, Fra Salimbene da Parma, the
famous Franciscan, explained that he met Saint Louis when the latter travelled
through Sens on his journey to the Holy Land for his first crusade. Salimbene
affirms that the king was slender and gracile (in other words tall and skinny).41 We
can quote another text, anonymous this time, whose title indicates a post-1297 date,
stemming from the world of the mendicant friars: the ‘Beati Ludovici vita partim ad
38Deschamps, ‘La statue de saint Louis’; Émile Van Moé, Un vrai portrait de saint Louis, Paris:
Courville, 1941; Deschamps, ‘A propos de la statue’, 39. 39Sauerländer, ‘‘Physionomia est doctrina salutis’…’. In the same direction, see also Martin
Büchsel, ‘Nur der Tyran hat sein eigenes Gesicht. Königsbilder im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert in
Frankreich und Deutschland’ in: Büchsel, Schmitt, Das Porträt, 123-140. 40Contrary to what claims Jacques Le Goff, see Jacques Le Goff, Saint Louis, Paris: Gallimard,
2013, 598. 41Giuseppe Scalia, ed., Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, Bari, 1966, 319-320.
11
lectiones, partim ad sacrum sermonem parata.’42 There is a small paragraph about
the features of the king. Aside from the clichéd descriptions (beauty and just
proportion) and features which are more moral than physical,43 we can be sure that
Louis IX was tall, as asserted by Fra Salimbene. Above all, the excerpt explains that
the king was precociously hoary (probably after the crusade), and confirms a part of
the iconographical corpus of which we will deal hereafter.
B) Two trends in the representations of Saint Louis
Once the corpus had been established (and disencumbered of these useless scoria),
what could we deduce of it about the image of Saint Louis, as it built up during his
lifetime and above all after his death and his canonisation? The fine studies of
various French researchers since the nineteenth century (Longnon, Mâle, Fournée,
etc.),44 and especially Anglo-Saxon and German ones of recent times (Kauffmann,
Gaposchkin, and with a different perspective, Praske)45 have distinguished quite
rightly two great families of representations; but maybe they did not insist enough
on the footbridges or the contact points between them. We must emphasise at once
that the great majority of the images of Saint Louis produced during the first half of
the fourteenth century proceed from the same circle (the royal family, the high civil
servants of the monarchy, the mendicant orders, notably the Franciscans) and
coincides with a rather narrow geographical zone (North of France, especially Île-
de-France and Normandy). These two observations correspond with the fact that the
42‘Beati Ludovici vita, partim ad lectiones, partim ad sacrum sermonem parata’, in: Recueil
des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 23, Paris, 1894, 173. 43Le Goff, Saint Louis, 599. 44Auguste Longnon, Documents parisiens sur l’iconographie de saint Louis… d’après un manuscrit
de Peiresc conservé à la Bibliothèque de Carpentras, Paris: P. Champion, 1882; Émile Mâle, ‘La vie
de Saint Louis dans l’art français aux commencements du XIVe siècle’, in: Mélanges Bertaux:
recueil de travaux, dédié à la mémoire d’Émile Bertaux, Paris: E. de Boccard, 1924, 193-204;
Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’, ‘Saint Louis dans l’art français au début
du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le culte et l’iconographie de saint Louis en
Normandie’. 45Martin Kauffmann, ‘The image of Saint Louis’, in: Janet Bately, ed., Kings and Kingship in
Medieval Europe, London: King's College London, 1993, 265-288 and figs. 9-17; Praske, Ludwig
IX. der Heilige (unfortunately unpublished and which I ignored until now; one can catch a
glimpse of this PhD in Tanja Praske, ‘Bildstrategien unter Philip IV. dem Schönen (1285-1314)
und Karl V. dem Weisen (1364-1380). Das Königsbild im Wandel‘, in: Martin Büchsel, Peter
Schmidt, eds, Realität und Projektion. Wirklichkeitsnahe Darstellung in Antike und Mittelalter,
Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2005, 147-170); M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis.
Kingship, Sanctity and Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press,
2008. R. Rey had a clear view of these two trends in an early article (Raymond Rey, ‘Une
statue inconnue du roi saint Louis au XIVe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société archéologique du Midi de
la France, 3e sér., 4, 1939-1942, 147-152). However he wrote this essay about a statue at
Montcabrier that he held dating from the 14th century, but we must date it, most probably, in
the 17th century…
12
cult of the new saint had been promoted from a focal point: the heart of the
Capetian monarchy, Paris.
1. An official image
The first type of image shows the king as young, clean-shaven, and mostly with the
coronation garb and the ‘regalia’ or at least a part of them (especially the sceptre and
the ‘hand of justice’, not to mention the crown). This type is especially common, as
T. Praske justly remarked, in the field of statuary and after the canonisation, but not
exclusively. The reason for this predominance is that sculpture pertains mostly to
the ‘public’ sphere of medieval art, and, as will be demonstrated, this category of
representations is peculiarly apt to this sphere. We find this type also in
representations of the king in his lifetime, especially in the seals (with the distinctive
feature that the king is here seated on a throne). We should notice here that Louis IX
is clean-shaven in the second seal as well as in the first, even though the king had
ordered the second seal during the crusade, when he had a beard. We do not take
into account the final image of the Moralized Bible of Toledo, because it pertains to a
very peculiar field; moreover, the young and shaven head of the king coincides only
with the fact that Louis IX is then an adolescent. The same conclusion can be drawn
in relation to the set of images at the beginning of the manuscript of Guillaume of
Saint-Pathus,46 and to the Hours of Jeanne of Navarra (fig. 8),47 since in these
representations it is the child or the adolescent who is shown, then the young man
before the seventh crusade. In the Hours of Jeanne of Navarra, the whole cycle
shows only a young and thus beardless Louis, because this manuscript insists on the
youth of the king and on his departure to the crusade.
Among the most famous instances of this ‘official’ image, the statue of
Mainneville must be cited (fig. 9);48 as well as the one at the Cluny Museum which
originates probably from the Sainte-Chapelle,49 where it should have topped the
46By the way, it must be recorded that the images of this manuscript are not distributed
according a development axis, because the narrative of Guillaume of Saint-Pathus does not
follow a strict chronological line. Fol. 16: Louis IX learning to read ; fol. 24: Louis IX,
adolescent, attending the service; fol. 27: Louis IX ill; fol. 231 v°: wedding of Louis IX and
abstinence; fol. 239: Louis IX and Pierre of Laon and Louis IX in prayer. 47Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. acq. lat. 3145. See Marcel Thomas,
‘L’iconographie de saint Louis, dans les Heures de Jeanne de Navarre’, in: Carolus-Barré,
Septième centenaire, 209-231. 48Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’, ‘Saint Louis dans l’art français au début
du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le culte et l’iconographie de saint Louis en
Normandie’; Praske, ‘Bildstrategien unter Philip IV.’; Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 32. About the
attributes that bore the king, one can hesitate, but various clues indicate the coronation
instruments. 49Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 31; Praske, Ludwig IX. der Heilige, 67-77 discards this origin and
suggests a later date. There is a statuette, in private hands, which looks rather like the one of
the Cluny Museum and is often identified as Saint Louis (André Chamson, Paul Deschamps,
eds, Saint Louis: la Sainte-Chapelle, exhib. cat., Paris: Les Presses artistiques, 1960, nr 181), but
the similarity to the prototype in discussion seems more generic.
13
shrine which included the reliquary-bust of Saint Louis, as attested by a copy of a
lost illuminated page of the benedictional of the duke of Bedford.50 This reliquary-
bust is another example, which originated in 1299-1306 and disappeared during the
Revolution, but is known mainly from two engravings of the seventeenth century
(the most accurate being for Ch. Du Cange).51 Another instance is the disappeared
statue of the Saint-Louis church in Poissy, known thanks to a copy made for
Gaignières in the seventeenth century (without attributes, since the king was shown
with joint hands, as were his wife and his children).52 One can mention also the bas-
relief of the Carnavalet Museum originating from the Cordeliers church in Paris (fig.
10);53 the statue of the chapel of the north collateral of Amiens cathedral, built
between 1297 and 1302;54 and finally the statue of Carcassonne.55
2. An intimate image, close to mendicant spirituality
Alongside the first type of image is a second, where the king is bearded, mostly
hoary, and sometimes with simple clothes. This second group is found most often in
50Paris, Cluny Museum, inv. 22847, see Elisabeth Antoine, ed., Un trésor gothique. La châsse de
Nivelles, Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1996, nr 35; Jannic Durand, Marie-Pierre
Lafitte, eds, Le trésor de la Sainte-Chapelle: Paris, Musée du Louvre 31 mai 2001 - 27 août 2001,
exib. cat., Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2001, nr 27. 51Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 29. 52Praske, ‘Bildstrategien unter Philip IV.’, 157-164; Moufflet, Sous le sceau du roi, 31. 53Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 37. In the same church, the lost statuette which was present in the
funerary chapel of Blanche de France seems to date back only to the 16th century and is left
out of the present analysis, see Jean-Pierre Babelon, ‘Une nouvelle image de saint Louis sur
un bas-relief du Musée Carnavalet’, Les monuments historiques de la France, 16, 1970, nr 4, 31-
40, esp. 35. Still in the Cordeliers church, the trumeau statue, also lost, represented Saint
Louis in a similar garb. The work is known only thanks to a partial reproduction (the bust), a
pastel made for Claude du Molinet, in 1682, kept in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
(following an old description, the king holds the scepter), see Amédée Boinet, ‘Catalogue des
œuvres d’art de la Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève’, Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et
de l’Île-de-France, 47, 1924, 87-172, nr 65; Jean-Pierre Babelon, ed., La France de saint Louis.
Septième centenaire de la mort de saint Louis, exhib. cat., Paris: Les Presses Artistiques, 1971, nr
24; Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’, ‘Saint Louis dans l’art français au
début du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le culte et l’iconographie de saint
Louis en Normandie’; Praske, ‘Bildstrategien unter Philip IV.’; Moufflet, Sous le sceau du roi,
10. 54Deschamps, ‘La statue de saint Louis’, 121, footnote 2, 122, footnote 7; Praske, Ludwig IX.
der Heilige, 57-61. On the chapel: Dany Sandron, Amiens. La cathédrale, Paris: Zodiaque, 2004,
155-156. 55Jules de Lahondès, ‘Une statue de Saint Louis à l’église Saint-Vincent de Carcassonne’,
Bulletin archéologique, 1899, 3, 483-490; Jules de Lahondès, ‘Église de Saint-Vincent [à
Carcassonne]’, in: Congrès archéologique de France (73e session, Carcassonne et Perpignan, 1906),
Paris-Caen, 1907, 47. Praske, Ludwig IX. der Heilige, 65 sees this image in another category, for
the lack of the coronation garb. Nevertheless, the statue is important precisely because it
shows an intermediate stage of the representation of Saint Louis and in a region pertaining
to the royal domain, but far from Paris.
14
the field of illumination and painting, and most often the king is shown in the midst
of action.
We can quote firstly an important manuscript recently brought to light, the
royal breviary made for the first son of the king (the future king Louis X) in the first
quarter of the fourteenth century.56 Also important is the manuscript of the work of
Guillaume of Saint-Pathus, for the period of the life of the king after the seventh
crusade;57 as well as the scenes of the life of Saint Louis in the Hours of Jeanne of
Evreux;58 and the paintings (probably on the wood panels of an altarpiece) which
decorated the Sainte-Chapelle and are known thanks to copies made for Peiresc (fig.
11).59 In all these representations, the king is mostly shown with simple clothing, in
accordance with the testimony of texts.60 Indeed Joinville for instance, tells that
upon returning from the crusade, the king never wore luxurious clothes, contenting
himself with coats of a uniform colour.61 We would like here to stress a detail of the
frontispiece illumination of the Miroir historial of Vincent of Beauvais, translated into
French by Jean of Vignay for the queen Jeanne of Burgundy, in the volume kept in
the Bibliothèque nationale de France.62 On this page, the king puts on the coronation
garb, but it is a late overpainting. Thanks to lacks in the substance of the
56Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAL 3255, with four images of Saint Louis, see Avril, Un
bréviaire royal. 57Fol. 40: arrival of Louis IX at Nicosia, but where the king is however blond; fol. 43 v°: Louis
IX teaching, idem; fol. 47: Louis IX attending the mass, where the king is hoary as he will be
henceforward; fol. 47 v°: Louis IX praying on a journey; fol. 61 v°: communion of Louis IX;
fol. 63: Louis IX kissing the crucifix; fol. 67: Louis IX worshipping the relics (again blond, but
in a brown garb); fol. 85 v°: Louis IX reading the Bible; fol. 90: two scenes, including Louis IX
praying; fol. 99: Louis IX exchanging presents; fol. 127 v°: murder of Tûrân Shâh (Louis IX
prisoner); fol. 137: Louis IX and the poor; fol. 187: same subject; fol. 199: battle of Mansûra;
fol. 213: Louis IX and the poor; fol. 221 v° Louis IX and Simon du Val; fol. 245 v°: Louis IX
dispensing justice; fol. 277: death of Louis IX. 58The scenes of the life of Saint Louis in this manuscript seem to have inspired a parallel
cycle in the Hours of Marie of Navarra, daughter of Jeanne of Navarre, see Alix Saulnier-Pinsard, « Une nouvelle œuvre du Maître de San Marcos : le Livre d’Heures de
Marie de Navarre », La Miniatura italiana tra Gotico e Rinascimento. Atti del II Congresso di
Storia della Miniatura Italiana, Florence, 1985, t. I, p. 35-50, 1985. We do not take into account
here this manuscript, not only because it has been made in Catalonia by an Italianate
illuminator, but specially because, in spite of the abundance of the cycle (nine scenes, as for
the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux), it presents a stereotyped character. 59Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 30. For the lost frescoes of the Lourcine convent, of which exists
only the copy of a scene, where Saint Louis is present, it is not obvious to know whether the
king bore a beard or not, because it is only a sketchy drawing; see, ibid. 60In the lost paintings of Sainte-Chapelle, the king vests however the royal garb, except for
the scene where he receives discipline. 61Joinville, in: Albert Pauphilet, ed., Historiens et chroniqueurs du Moyen Âge, Paris: Gallimard,
1952 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), 350 (see Yvonne Deslandres, ‘Le costume du roi saint
Louis, étude iconographique et technique’, in: Carolus-Barré, Septième centenaire, 105-114,
and Stan Pellistrandi, ‘La garde-robe de Louis IX, d’après la Vie de saint Louis de Le Nain de
Tillemont’, Bulletin de la Société nationale des antiquaires de France, 1999, 173-185). 62Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 33 ; Avril, Un bréviaire royal, footnote 52, p. 22 and footnote 56.
15
overpainting, various authors interpreted the original vestment seen underneath as
one of the tertiaries of Saint Francis. Such an interpretation leads to a problem, since
this would be a representation of Saint Louis donning the tertiaries costume in the
royal milieu during the 1330s, when the legend of the king belonging to this
religious trend appears only later. Furthermore, the first images of this
representation begin in the fifteenth century.63 In fact, it seems that it is impossible
to interpret in this sense the vestment of the king as a tertiaries costume. Indeed, we
see a long and brown garb, but without the cord belt. Thus, the vestment of Louis IX
must be understood as the type of simple clothing worn by the king after the
crusade.64 We also find the image of the bearded king in the lost stained-glass of St-
Denis (it is likely that even though they were created at the very beginning of the
fourteenth century they are known only by eighteenth-century engravings, and thus
not very accurate)65 and in those of Fécamp (shortly after 1307-1308).66 Fortunately
the latter have been preserved, but one must specify that they underwent many a
restoration and that in many cases the king is represented in armour, which hides
the lower part of his face. Nevertheless, we observe that Louis IX is shown with a
63Emile Bertaux, ‘Les saints Louis dans l’art italien’, Revue des deux mondes, 70, nr 158, 1900,
616-634; reprinted in Idem, Etudes d’histoire et d’art, Paris, 1911, 31-111, esp. 39. By the way, in
this important article Bertaux devotes a lot of pages (32, 83-85) to the fresco by Giotto in the
Bardi chapel at Santa Croce in Florence, where Saint Louis holds the cord of the Franciscan
order. He sees in it the first example (because dated not very far after 1317) of the link
between the French king and the tertiaries of Saint Francis. He is right in stressing this
context and the precocity of the case, but is wrong in asserting that this cord must be the one
of the tertiaries. In my view, the cord is ‘only’ the attribute of Saint Francis and the
Franciscans in general. 64In the same perspective, I do not follow the otherwise beautiful analysis of J. Lowden of an
ivory (around 1325-1350) which he presumes represents Saint Louis in the habit of a
Dominican friar, see John Lowden, Medieval and Later Ivories in the Courtauld Gallery: complete
catalogue, London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2013, nr 9. 65Bernard de Montfaucon, Les monuments de la monarchie française…, Paris, 1730, vol. 2, 158.
See Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’, ‘Saint Louis dans l’art français au
début du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le culte et l’iconographie de saint
Louis en Normandie’; Brown, ‘The chapel’; Elisabeth Brown, ‘Philippe le Bel and the remains
of Saint Louis’, Gazette des beaux-arts, 95, 1980, 1, 175-182; Brown, ‘The chapels’; Kauffmann,
‘The image of Saint Louis’; Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis; Leistenschneider, Die
französische Königsgrablege, 88-90. 66Marcel Aubert, ‘Une verrière du XIVe siècle à la Trinité de Fécamp’, Beaux-Arts. Revue
d’information artistique, t. 6, 1928, n° 11, 1er juin, 165-166, see 165; Jean Lafond, ‘Les vitraux de
l’abbaye de Fécamp’, in: L’abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp, 658-1958, vol. 3, Fécamp: I. Durant et
Fils, 1961, 105-107; Louis Grodecki, ‘Saint Louis et le vitrail’, Les monuments historiques de la
France, 16, 1970, nr 4, 14; Babelon, La France de saint Louis, nr 94; Philippe Verdier,
‘Témoignages artistiques des mariages franco-anglais au début du XIVe siècle’, Bulletin
monumental, 131, 1973, nr 2, 137-142 ; Fournée, ‘Iconographie de Louis IX, roi de France’,
‘Saint Louis dans l’art français au début du XIVe siècle’, ‘Le saint Louis de Mainneville’, ‘Le
culte et l’iconographie de saint Louis en Normandie’; Kauffmann, ‘The image of Saint Louis’,
265 and seq.; Martine Callias Bey, Les vitraux de Haute-Normandie, Paris: Éditions du
Patrimoine, 2001, 22, 304.
16
beard after returning from the crusade (for instance in the panel where he is shown
feeding the leprous monk of Royaumont).67
Thus, it could be inferred that this family of representations was especially
cherished in the field of painting, either on parchment, or on wood-panel, or on
glass. In my opinion, however, no more than for the preceding group, it is not a
matter of technical field. What is at stake is the fact that we are dealing in this case
with complex cycles of pictures, represented thanks to the various categories of
medieval painting, and no longer with simple images which were often (but not
exclusively) produced within the sculpture field. For instance, consider an ivory
writing leaflet, recently and justly discharged of the suspicion to be spurious by an
Italian researcher (fig. 12).68 The leaflet shows the famous moment where the king,
during his stay in the Holy Land, buried the dead knights, partially rotten, after the
battle of Sidon (or Sayette in the old graphic, the contemporary Saïda), in 1253. The
ivory seems to draw its inspiration from the same scene in the breviary for Poissy, in
the stained-glasses of St-Denis (fig. 13), in those of Fécamp, and in the Hours of
Jeanne of Evreux (fig. 14). In these works, as in the leaflet, beholders who hold their
noses instantly call to mind the apostles surrounding Christ at the resurrection of
Lazarus. The image calls to mind the idea of the imitatio Christi, so dear to the
Franciscans, even if Louis IX does not operate miracles, here, but merely
accomplishes a pious act of charity. The only difference between the ivory leaflet
and the other examples is that the former shows a second brave character who does
not hold his nose; a friar (probably a Franciscan friar, precisely). We would like very
much to know what scene was shown on the other ivory leaf, which, following the
usual type, and with the leaf preserved, was a writing leaflet in the form of a
diptych. There are many reasons to argue that it was another scene from the life of
Saint Louis, whose model was probably drawn from the same group of prestigious
works.
3. Some ‘mixed’ images
Finally, there are various representations which mix characteristics drawn from both
groups, especially when they show the ‘official’ king, yet bearded and hoary. We can
quote firstly the plaque of Guy of Meyjos, dated 1307 (fig. 15).69 In this case, this
variant can be explained by the distance of the Limousin enamelling workshops in
relation to the epicentre of the royal power, Paris, and also by the ‘private’ character
of the work. However, we met also this typology in various royal manuscripts. We
67Babelon, La France de saint Louis, ill. on page 63 at right. But it is also the case in a scene
which J. Lafond identified as the delivery of the Crown of thorns to the bishop of Paris (see
ibid. ill. on page 64 at right). Thus, there is a contradiction, which should be removed in
checking the authenticity of the face in this panel or the correctness of the iconographic
interpretation. 68Florence, Museo nazionale del Bargello, inv. 115 C; see Benedetta Chiesi, Ilaria Ciseri,
Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, eds, Il Medioevo in viaggio, exhib. cat, Firenze: Giunti, 2015, nr 56
(Benedetta Chiesi). 69Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 36.
17
should mention first of all the manuscript of the Speculum historiale of Vincent of
Beauvais kept in Dijon, which was for a long time believed to be the very exemplar
given to the king by the author, but is considered now to be of a later date.70
Additionally, one can quote the register of the Ordinances of the royal household
(around 1316-1321);71 the manuscript of the Teachings of Saint Louis (the beard is
difficult to see, even in the original, but seems to be there, even if very short; and the
hair is clearly painted white), around 1330-1340;72 a sacramentary of Senlis, with the
same commentary for the vignette with Saint Louis;73 the image of Saint Louis in a
manuscript of the Chronics of St-Denis, where the king bears a model of the Sainte-
Chapelle, an exceptional instance for this period;74 a missal produced in Paris,
around 1345-1350, where an illumination shows the king not only in the coronation
garb and with the attributes of power, but seated in majesty;75 and the
representations of the statue in the chapel at St-Denis in the Life of Saint Louis by
Guillaume of Saint-Pathus, already quoted above.
Finally, we can quote a head of Saint Louis, found recently with two other
ones, from the royal Cistercian abbey of Royallieu (not far from Compiègne),
founded in 1303 (fig. 16).76 At first hand, on this head, probably part of a statue on
the main portal of the church, one can see only a common representation of the
king, crowned and young or idealised, i.e. beardless. But recent examination and
restoration of the work has proved that originally, a very short beard was painted
with bluish hues, meaning, in my view, a hoary face.
To consider, on the other hand, the register of the Ordinances of the
household (fig. 17), we are at the heart of the system of the royal power. In this
context, why not turn to the official type of representation? This image was created
by a high-quality illuminator, as for all the quoted manuscripts in fact, and can
perhaps explain how this specialist had recourse to a commonplace prototype in his
field, thus justifying the appearance of these ‘mixed’ representations. On the other
side, one should also presume that the statue in St-Denis really presented this
typology (the king in the coronation garb, but bearded), which would explain the
survival of the model, at least partially, in some works. Thirdly, in the case of the
cycles which presented numerous images of the life of Saint Louis, it was natural to
70Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 93. 71Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 27. 72Le Pogam, Saint Louis, nr 35. 73Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms 103, fol. 278, see Avril, Un bréviaire royal, 17. 74Babelon, La France de saint Louis, nr 211; L’art au temps des rois maudits. Philippe le Bel et ses
fils, exhib. cat., Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1998, nr 172: Paris,
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, ms 782, fol. 327 (the manuscript is dated about 1275, but the
folio in cause goes back only to the 1310’s). 75Babelon, La France de saint Louis, nr 234; Les fastes du gothique: le siècle de Charles V, exhib.
cat., Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, nr 268; Durand, Lafitte, Le trésor,
nr 52: Lyon, Bibliothèque municipale, ms 5122, fol. 291. 76Stéphanie Diane Daussy, ‘À propos de trois têtes sculptées provenant de l’abbaye de
Royallieu (Oise) (premier quart du XIVe siècle)’, in Regards sur les dépôts lapidaires de la France
du Nord. Actes, Delphine Hanquiez dir., Caen, CRAHM, 2011, 99-111.
18
show the king diversely in the beginning of his life and after the crusade, as made
by the illuminator of the manuscript of Guillaume of Saint-Pathus. Thus, just a few
years later, in the Grandes Chroniques painted for the king Jean II le Bon, the same
watershed divided the representations of Louis IX.77 But significantly, in this royal
manuscript, even when Saint Louis bears the beard, the accent is on the majestic side
of his representation.
However, we can notice that these images of a bearded Saint Louis, belonging
either to the main second group or to the ‘mixed’ category, disappear afterwards
almost totally from the iconographic skyline. During the late Middle Ages, modern
times and contemporary period, the clean-shaven (and young) type dominates by
and large, not only in isolated representations, but also in the cycles of images, as if
from now on, physical reality matters less than an ideal and timeless vision of the
saint king.
What are the contact points between those various types and the real features of
the king?
One should have guessed it: we do not see a contradiction between these various
families of images, since they coincide to different parts of the life of Louis IX and
above all reflect the variegated interests of the circles for which they were produced.
Thus, the two main types are ‘real’ (not realistic) and convey each one a truthful
image, but focus on one type of appearance of the king. The youth and clean-shaven
king tallied with the official image and was in keeping with the habits in portraying
Capetian kings since the end of the twelfth century. This type was fit for
highlighting majesty, vigour, and energy, the traits inherent to the royal
representation, especially important for Philipp IV the Fair. On the other side, the
king bearded and hoary was the real image of Louis IX in the second half of his
reign. This image matched with the perspective of some religious groups, especially
the mendicant orders, but also members of the royal family close to this spirituality.
It can be argued that this was not a casual incident because the king let his beard
grow during the crusade and moreover, he chose to keep it on returning in France.
Such a choice coincided with the profile of penance and humility that Louis IX had
developed since the very beginning of his reign (under the influence of his mother,
Blanche of Castille), but clearly increased after the failure of his first crusade. It
should be noted that kings of France were systematically beardless, in the reality as
well as in representation, since Louis VII (1137-1180). This also coincides with the
general evolution of men’s fashion, since the beard tends to disappear around the
end of the twelfth century, with the exception of special categories, mainly clerics.78
77London, The British Library, Royal 16 G VI, see Anne Dawson Hedeman, The royal image.
Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France 1274-1422, Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford:
University of California Press, 1991 (California studies in the history of art, 28), for instance
ill. 44-45, 49-50. 78Gilles Constable, ‘Introduction’, in: R. B. C. Huygens, ed., Buchardus de Bellevaux, Apologia
de barbis, Turnhout: Brepols, 1985 (Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio medievalis, 62), 47-
19
Thus the fact that Louis IX let his beard grow during the crusade of 1248-1254,
represented a violent breaking with the tradition.
One can wonder if the model of Saint Francis did not play a fundamental
part in this story, since the founder of the Friars Minor seems to have borne a beard,
precisely as a mark of penance, as shown in his first representations.79 But this
image tallied also with the notion that linked French monarchy and various royal
models of the past. Firstly, it echoed French royal dynasties which preceded
Capetians, i.e. Merovingians and Carolingians. And one could develop the links
between the choice of images of Saint Louis and the representations of those kings
during his reign, peculiarly those ordered by the king himself or made with his
agreement (for instance the group of sixteen funeral royal effigies at St-Denis).80 But
beyond these prototypes in recent history, there were others which were no less
actual, i.e. the kings of the Old Testament, kings with whom Saint Louis identified
deeply, especially Solomon in the first half of his reign, a model of wisdom as well
as of justice, and yet a mirror of the possible weakness and failure of the powerful,81
but also David, himself at once glorious by his deeds and penitent for his sins.82
Nevertheless, I believe that this association between Louis IX and the wearing of the
beard in the second half of his reign, has been a significant trend, even if, in art, the
corresponding typology did not outlive the elaboration and the success of another
more ‘official’ type of representation, where the king was beardless. Thus, in the
scene of the Adoration of the Magi, in the Psalter of Padua, probably made in the
circle of Louis IX around 1260, the youngest king bears a beard, like his two older
companions, and unlike the most widespread iconographic tradition (fig. 18).83 I
suggest that this feature is a reflection of the physical appearance of the king of
France, upon returning from the crusade.
As an epilogue, I will quote the comic sculpted group of ‘Saint Louis welcomed
by Marguerite of Provence on his return from the crusade’, a fake of the nineteenth
century (unknown location),84 which belongs to a larger group of forgeries and of
which a copy was made for the public park before the Ludwigskirche, in Berlin. This
grotesque composition reveals a strange taste and a Romanesque view of the Middle
Ages, for instance Marguerite tenderly leaning on the shoulder of her husband. Yet
the sculptor had the idea to give a beard to Louis IX, which was strange at the time,
but was in perfect agreement with the chosen episode. At least this forger perceived,
150 (which remains the best introduction to the matter, but unfortunately ends his review
with the end of the 12th century). 79Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate. Una storia per parole e immagini fino a
Bonaventura e Giotto, Torino: Einaudi, 1993. 80Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, ‘De l’image des rois à l’image du roi’, 48-49. 81Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, ‘De l’image des rois à l’image du roi’, 53-54. 82Let’s think to the example of the north rose-window of the Chartres cathedral, where are
precisely juxtaposed David and Salomon. 83Le Pogam, Saint Louis, ill. 145, 180. 84Robert Suckale, Auf den Spuren einer vergessenen Königin – Ein Hauptwerk der Pariser Hofkunst
im Bode-Museum, Berlin-Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013, 46-50 (here attributed to
Richard Moers, a sculptor active in Cologne in the last third of the 19th century).
20
probably by chance, something of the early and complex iconography of Saint
Louis.
Pierre-Yves Le Pogam is chief curator in the Department of Sculptures in the Louvre
Museum, Paris, where he is in charge of the medieval collection. He has written
many books and articles on architecture, sculpture and iconography of the Middle
Ages, especially for the twelfth-fourteenth centuries. He has curated numerous
exhibitions, including an exhibition on Saint Louis in 2014.
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